Checkered Past Means Uncertain Future For Woman

Short and frail with shoulder-length white hair and unable to walk without a cane, 76-year-old Kathryn Cramer didn't look like a woman with a past to hide.

She lived quietly in Miriam WoodBrown Village, a retirement community of attractive garden apartments in Perkasie. Neighbors described her as a woman who kept to herself and had no close friends.

"We didn't know much about her," one said. "She came and went on her own and so did we."

But all that changed this fall in Florida when Cramer failed to return a rental car and was arrested. When her name went out on a national computer crime network, a startling reply came from Georgia.

Cramer was a fugitive, a woman who escaped from a Georgia prison in 1971 at age 62, a woman with a 29-year history of convictions and prison sentences for passing bad checks from Buffalo, N.Y., to Brownsville, Tex.

"She's a paper hanger (a person who passes bad checks)," said John Siler, a spokesman for the Georgia Department of Corrections.

Georgia is seeking Cramer's extradition, and Florida Gov. Bob Graham has signed the papers. Cramer's attorney, John Tuthill, however, delayed the action 60 days when he won a stay Monday. Tuthill is now contesting the extradition while trying to convince Georgia officials to pardon his elderly and ailing client.

Meanwhile, Cramer's 98-year-old mother, whom she came north to be near in early 1983 and said she hoped to see before Christmas, died Thursday night in a nursing home in Doylestown Township, relatives said.

The story of Kathryn Cramer is sketchy and one in which fact is sometimes indistinguishable from fiction. Georgia authorities and even her attorney have been unable at times to ascertain the truth.

Cramer used at least eight aliases from 1942, when she was arrested in Mays Landing, N.J., to 1971 when she entered the Women's Correctional Institution at Hardwick,Ga., Siler said. Georgia authorities knew her as Nancy Cramer. Elsewhere, she was known as Ann Bascaglia and Kathryn Hegleysfitch.

In addition, Cramer has been inconsistent in statements about her life. When she entered prison in 1971, for instance, she told authorities that her parents were dead.

What is known is that Cramer was born Kathryn Gudd on Jan. 8, 1909, in Philadelphia. She was married at least once, maybe twice, and had five sons, with only one, Ted, surviving. He lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and declines to discuss his mother's case.

"I don't know anything about it," he said. "I don't want to know anything about it. I've been out of there for 40 years."

Cramer may have also attended college during an era when women normally did not. She told Georgia authorities that she holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry, and Tuthill said she appears to be well educated.

Otherwise, Cramer's history is written on rap sheets and prison records in states along the East Coast and through the deep South. She has served terms in various state and federal prisons, almost exclusively for offenses involving worthless checks, Georgia officials said.

In the 1960s, Cramer was treated at Norristown State Hospital for compulsive behavior related to the passing of bad checks, Tuthill and Siler said.

The treatment apparently was unsuccessful because in February and March 1971 Cramer was convicted of passing $1,337 in bad checks in separate cases in three counties in southern Georgia. She was sentenced to a total of six years and three months in the Women's Correctional Institution at Hardwick.

On Aug. 8, 1971, a little more than five months after entering prison, Cramer escaped from the minimum-security section by slipping away during Mass in the main chapel. She hitchhiked to town, then boarded a bus to Florida, where she lived with friends.

Ironically, Cramer could have been released from prison as early as February 1973, if she had been granted parole at her first eligibility, said Silas Moore of the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles.

If refused parole, Cramer could have received early discharge by June 30, 1974, under a former Georgia law that reduced sentences by one-half for good behavior, Moore said.

In January 1983, Cramer moved into building C at Miriam Wood Brown Village, a cluster of tidy apartment buildings with aluminum siding and stone trim. Cramer made the move apparently to be close to her mother, who was in Neshaminy Manor Home.

In the village, neighbors said she lived quietly, never participating in activities in the community center across Shady Wood Drive.

"She was very secretive, and I didn't know anything about her," said Eleanor Whitefield, who lives across the hall.

Carolyn LaMont, deputy executive director of the Bucks County Housing Authority, which owns and manages the village, said Cramer posed no problems. "She has not passed bad checks to the housing authority," LaMont said. "She has paid her rent, and they have been good."